评测图粗化对GNN时钟树分析精度与效率的权衡,揭示其潜在风险
CTS-Bench: Benchmarking Graph Coarsening Trade-offs for GNNs in Clock Tree Synthesis
- 构建包含4860个设计的基准集,对比原始网表与聚类图表示
- 粗化可降17.2倍显存、提速3倍,但导致零样本预测R²为负
- 警示通用聚类方法可能破坏时钟分布建模,适合芯片物理设计研究者
图神经网络(GNN)在电子设计自动化中日益用于时钟树综合(CTS)分析,如时钟偏移和缓冲复杂度建模。然而,实际部署受限于原始门级网表带来的巨大内存与运行成本。图粗化常被用于提升可扩展性,但其对关键学习目标的影响尚未明确。本文提出CTS-Bench,一个系统评估图粗化、预测精度与计算效率之间权衡的基准套件。该套件包含4860个收敛的物理设计解,覆盖五种架构,提供后布位设计生成的原始门级与聚类图表示。以时钟偏移预测为例,我们发现存在明显的精度-效率权衡:图粗化可使GPU内存降低最多17.2倍,训练速度提升最多3倍,但会移除建模时钟分布的关键结构信息,导致零样本评估下频繁出现负R²值。结果表明,通用图聚类方法可能根本性损害CTS学习目标,即使全局物理指标不变。CTS-Bench支持针对时钟感知粗化策略的合理评估,推动真实物理设计约束下的GNN架构与加速器基准测试,并为学习辅助的CTS分析与优化奠定基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly explored for physical design analysis in Electronic Design Automation, particularly for modeling Clock Tree Synthesis behavior such as clock skew and buffering complexity. However, practical deployment remains limited due to the prohibitive memory and runtime cost of operating on raw gate-level netlists. Graph coarsening is commonly used to improve scalability, yet its impact on CTS-critical learning objectives is not well characterized. This paper introduces CTS-Bench, a benchmark suite for systematically evaluating the trade-offs between graph coarsening, prediction accuracy, and computational efficiency in GNN-based CTS analysis. CTS-Bench consists of 4,860 converged physical design solutions spanning five architectures and provides paired raw gate-level and clustered graph representations derived from post-placement designs. Using clock skew prediction as a representative CTS task, we demonstrate a clear accuracy-efficiency trade-off. While graph coarsening reduces GPU memory usage by up to 17.2x and accelerates training by up to 3x, it also removes structural information essential for modeling clock distribution, frequently resulting in negative $R^2$ scores under zero-shot evaluation. Our findings indicate that generic graph clustering techniques can fundamentally compromise CTS learning objectives, even when global physical metrics remain unchanged. CTS-Bench enables principled evaluation of CTS-aware graph coarsening strategies, supports benchmarking of GNN architectures and accelerators under realistic physical design constraints, and provides a foundation for developing learning-assisted CTS analysis and optimization techniques.
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